Monsters - Matt Rogers (icecream ebook reader TXT) 📗

Or maybe he wasn’t even armed. Whatever the case, Slater finished him off by grabbing his skull in a two-handed grip and smashing it into the concrete wall beside the closed door.

He dropped like a bag of meat and bones, which is what he was.

Slater whipped back to the guy with the broken wrist and used the momentum of the pivot to lash out in a sweeping leg kick. His shin blasted the outside of the guy’s knee, knocked it into the other leg, and took his whole base out from under him. He went down in a heap and Slater stomped on his head twice.

He turned to the last man, the one with the broken jaw.

He froze.

The guy was still lying on his back, brandishing a HK pistol with a fearsome suppressor attached. He’d only just managed to work it free, but Slater could see he was close to death. His bloodshot eyes watered and the broken jaw was already starting to puff his cheeks up, swelling under his eyes and screwing with his vision even further. On top of that, slamming the back of his head against the ground had likely severely concussed him.

Slater registered the sight of the gun and jerked to the right.

The guy fired.

He would’ve missed even if Slater had stayed still.

He could probably see four Will Slaters in his vision.

No idea who to focus on, no idea who was real.

The bullet spat in the confined space and the guy jolted, shocked, probably at the sight of all the Slaters moving at once. Slater used the opportunity to leap forward and kick the gun out of his hand, breaking most of his fingers in the process. Another three or four stomps to his head and he was dead.

No more movement.

From anyone.

Slater checked himself over. His breathing was erratic, out of control, so he focused on stabilising his oxygen intake as he used the motel sheets to wipe the blood off his fist. Other than that, there was no evidence of the carnage on his person.

It’s a fine art to ignore your body’s responses to a life-or-death fight. He felt juiced to the gills, and there was an overwhelming urge to burst out of the room and sprint until he collapsed just to get rid of the excess energy. Instead he fought it down and methodically searched the corpses. He came away with three Heckler & Koch pistols — two VP9s and a HK45 Tactical, with 9mm and .45 ACP rounds respectively. Each dead man carried two spare mags for each weapon. The guns themselves were already loaded with full mags. It was akin to striking gold. The money clips he found in each man’s jacket pocket didn’t even compare, but the three bundles of notes still added up to over fifteen thousand dollars cash.

He tucked all the money away, shoved the sidearms in the back of his waistband and cinched his belt tighter to prevent them from wriggling around.

Then he walked out.

He was back on the landing thirty seconds after he ran into the room.

Nothing had changed. Mary stood gripping the railing, perplexed and shocked and motionless. She’d been alternating her gaze between the police cruiser across the street and the sealed door, but now she affixed a terrified stare on Slater. King remained hunched over the car window, his broad shoulders stretching from one edge of the frame to the other. He was gesticulating with one hand like an elderly Italian man irate about a card game, locked in a good-natured yet passionate debate.

Slater turned back to Mary. ‘I’m with Alexis.’

The relief nearly made her knees buckle. ‘What just happened—?’

Slater jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘They’re in there. They’re not coming out. It’s okay.’

‘I heard thumps. I heard…bones breaking.’

Slater used a hand on her shoulder to gently guide her toward the stairs. ‘Yeah. Listen, we might have to pretend we’re together. Only for a minute or so.’

‘What?’

‘Just copy what I do and try not to look too scared of me.’

37

A phone started chiming in the centre console.

It jolted Alexis out of the darkness of her mind.

All that training had gotten her ready for the day when she’d need to properly utilise her skills, and now she had. There were six bodies in her wake. That understanding, that realisation, carried weight beyond what she could comprehend.

But what she could do was pick up the phone and look at the caller information.

She answered without a word, now back on the civilised roads of the Palo Alto Hills.

Heidi said, ‘Give me good news.’

Alexis said, ‘Not much of that going around.’

No gasp, no surprise, just silence. Cold computation. The woman’s composure was otherworldly. ‘This isn’t going to stop.’

‘I’m counting on it. Keep sending them. Eventually you’ll run out of people to call and you’ll be wide open.’

‘You must be new to this. I’ll never run out of people to call. That’s the point of having money.’

‘Money’s good. But reputation is everything. If the underworld starts to realise that the men you’re sending out into the fray aren’t coming back, they’ll stop answering the phone. No one wants to be cannon fodder.’

Heidi couldn’t deny that, because it was the absolute truth. She said, ‘But you’re not superhuman either.’

Alexis didn’t answer.

Heidi said, ‘It doesn’t matter if my contacts stop answering the phone. I have my own private security. I can wait you out. You’re not getting to me. I have all the time in the world.’

‘No you don’t.’

Also true.

Alexis said, ‘I’m sure you live in a palace. I’m sure it’s fortified. Some gated community with cops crawling all over it. So you’re right. I don’t want to handle our business at your home.’

‘Then that’s where I’ll stay.’

‘And let your company die?’

Silence.

‘I’ve been checking the news, Heidi,’ Alexis said. ‘The big launch is close. Those two guys from the board in your office when I came in…they sure didn’t seem happy. You’re supposed to perform. You can’t work from home. Not at a time like this.’

‘You won’t hit me